/**
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */
package org.apache.cassandra.db.clock;

import org.apache.cassandra.db.Column;

/**
 * Specifies a Reconciler for a ColumnFamily.
 */
public abstract class AbstractReconciler
{
    /**
     * @return Reconcile the two columns into one depending on the clock types. 
     * For example a strategy could be to keep the one with the highest timestamp.
     */
    public abstract Column reconcile(Column left, Column right);

    public final boolean equals(Object obj)
    {
        if (obj == null)
            return false;
        else
            return obj.getClass().getName().equals(getClass().getName());
    }
}
